Official Hal Blaine Site

One of the great Los Angeles session men, he played drums on countless hit records, as well as some of the best instrumental studio productions of the sixties. Here’s the Official Hal Blaine Website

here’s his drumming on iTunes
The Gene Norman Group featuring Glen Campbell, Jim Horn, Al Delory, Lyle Ritz, and Hal Blaine - Dylan Jazz
Nancy Sinatra & Hal Blaine - The Essential Nancy Sinatra
Glen Campbell - Classic Campbell

Chachacharming
on Chachachantal Goya

Chantal Goya CD

This magnificent website has an article on one of my favorite yeye-girls – Chantal Goya! I dig France Gall, Francoise Hardy, Sheila and Sylvie Vartan very much for their music, but Chantal appeared in my favorite non-surf movie, Masculin Feminin by Jean Luc Godard, where she sings, and plays – what else – an up and coming yeye-girl. If I had never seen this film I wouldn’t understand yeye, Paris, french movies, mod, the 60s, and thus wouldn’t really have lived.
The trailer for the movie.

Chantal Goya

Here’s her MySpace.

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain

Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain
Highly recommended – very fun stuff. Especially when they find endless variations of chord patterns which repeat throughout musical history and make a big mix out of it. Incredible stuff. Apparently been together for 28 years – with showmanship and chops to match!
Here’s the homepage.
Here’s their music at iTunes.
They have a CD and live DVD out. Review to follow here. Today I got the info they’re in Hamburg for the next two weeks – so don’t miss them!

Retro Cocktail Hour

This is a re really good online radio show with usually two hours of big band, lounge and exotica music, mostly old but some really good new stuff thrown in during the second hour. The Retro Cocktail Hour has been going for years and years and Darrell Brogdon keeps the quality level nailed on a high level – he’s deep into this, obviously.

Quote from his homepage:

the likable, eager-to-please instrumental pop of the 1950s and ’60s is back! Sparked by CD reissues from such major labels as RCA and Capitol Records, the lounge music craze encompasses a diverse array of music – the Polynesian sway of Les Baxter and Martin Denny, the eccentric pop confections of Juan Garcia Esquivel, the mambo madness of Perez Prado, “private eye jazz” from TV’s 77 Sunset Strip and Peter Gunn and the cartoon-like caperings of Raymond Scott, among others.

Kansas Public Radio’s Retro Cocktail Hour (Saturdays at 7:00 pm) is our weekly nod to the Space Age Pop revival. Here you’ll find vintage recordings from the dawn of the Hi-Fi Era – imaginative, light-hearted (and sometimes light-headed) pop stylings designed to underscore everything from the backyard barbecue to the high-tech bachelor pad. Darrell Brogdon serves up two hours of incredibly strange music on Kansas Public Radio, so grab a cocktail shaker and join us for The Retro Cocktail Hour.

Beatnik Beach Film Night

This I found today at Dumb Angel Gazette:
quote from site

Thursday, December 7, 2007. 7:00-11:00 p.m.
Roxie Cinema, 3117 16th Street at Valencia, Mission District, San Francisco, California

Authors Domenic Priore and Brian Chidester (Beatsville, Smile: The Story of Brian Wilson’s Lost Masterpiece, Dumb Angel #4: All Summer Long) will present a unique one-hour slide show documenting the Beat Generation’s long stretch over the Greater Los Angeles area between 1956 and 1966, via visuals of coffeehouses and Jazz joints from the Sunset Strip to Malibu, Venice and Newport Beach.

Legendary locations only heard about in books or in liner notes, from the Gas House and nearby Venice West, to the Unicorn and Shelly’s Manne-Hole in Hollywood, the Lighthouse and Insomniac Cafe in Hermosa Beach, then all the way down to Cafe Frankenstein (owned, operated and painted by Burt Shonberg) in Laguna Beach.

Artists from John Altoon to Eric ‘Big Daddy’ Nord gave these places a colourful splash, as did the wide variety of Folk singers and poets who performed on their stages. Accompanying the slideshow will be a rare screening of Dirty Feet (1965), shot primarily at the Prison of Socrates coffeehouse in Balboa. Special guest speakers TBA, there will be another short Beat film or two (including a color one shot inside Venice West), plus a few new routines by San Francisco’s own Devil-Ettes to jazz the room.

New Luxuriamusic Shows

Here..s what Domenic Priore wrote about the new Luxuriamusic shows:

Friday: Dom, Kari and Becky 3-9 pm on Luxuriamusic.com

hey there all youse MySpace pals…

Domenic Priore reporting here; I shoulda told you sooner, but I’ve just started a radio DJ gig on Friday afternoons, between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. Pacific Standard Time… that means my New York friends can tune in at 6:00 p.m…. as for England etc., it starts at something like 10 or 11 p.m. (In Hawaii, it’s on at noon)

This can be heard here, every Friday: Luxuriamusic.com

My show is called Volcanic Action, and the music is primarily Exotica and Surf… whatever works in that context, including West Coast Jazz, Bossa Nova, Hawaiian, Surf instrumentals and Surf movie soundtracks, ’60s Beach Boys/Jan & Dean-type things (Gals made those kinda records too!), Indo-Rock, records from Australia and South Africa, ethereal Joe Meek, Arthur Lyman, Martin Denny… lotsa groovy stuff to dance to, to relax with, and to take you far out into the oceanic stratoshpere. Remember what Lloyd Bridges said on Sea Hunt; “75% of the world is covered in water, so learn to live with it, and enjoy its many riches”

K.A.O.S. a Go Go with Agent Kari follows at 5 p.m. PST with Psychedelic Go Go music, deep and rich. To find out more about who Agent Kari is, see pages 200-205 of PAD (Chronicle Books)

The evening gets really gone, to happy-land, with Bubblegum & Other Delights from 7-9 PST. DJ Becky Ebenkamp (also known as Penelope Pitstop, New York Becky and more) gets down with the whole Joey Levine/Kastenez-Katz/Archies vibe… it’s better’n a thrilling game of chutes and ladders. (You can read tons of Becky’s work in the Kim Coper/David Smay book Bubblegum Music Is the Naked Truth, from Feral House).

Please be with us; we’re here every Friday, your mutual friends of Dumb Angel, spinnin’ on Luxuriamusic.com

Domenic Priore

Fridays on Luxuriamusic.com
3-5 pm Volcanic Action hosted by Domenic Priore

Pop historian Domenic Priore (of Dumb Angel Magazine) has got a new weekly show on my favorite radiostation, Luxuriamusic.com.

Each saturday 0:00 cet, 3:00 pm pst.

Now, this is the show if you have any interest in Surf music. In his first show last friday he played the direct LA roots of Surf, where it went and some mega-rare tracks from the 61-64 heyday, you wont hear anywhere else. Together with the other styles he spins it makes for very entertaining and interesting four hours.